By Margaret Hoagland, VP, Global Sales and Marketing, SIOS Technology
As organizations evaluate infrastructure changes to optimize
their IT operations, many are considering the transition from VMware to
Nutanix. This shift can bring significant benefits, such as better performance,
scalability, and cost-efficiency. However, before making the move, it's crucial
to assess your high availability (HA) needs to ensure your mission-critical
applications remain secure and operational.
Here are ten critical points to consider when selecting an
HA solution for a Nutanix environment.
1. Identify the most
critical applications
Start by identifying which applications in your current
VMware environment require high availability. Applications with 99.99% or
greater uptime needs, such as SQL Server or SAP, are essential to business
operations and cannot afford downtime. The productivity loss and customer
impact from even brief outages can be costly. By determining which applications
demand enhanced availability, you can tailor your HA strategy for Nutanix.
2. Consistency Across
Operating Systems
Does your environment include multiple operating systems,
such as Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux, Rocky Linux and Windows? If so, ensure that
your HA clustering solution supports a wide range of Linux distributions as
well as Windows and provides a consistent user experience across them. This can
streamline management, reduce complexity, and help prevent issues as you move
to Nutanix.
3. Change Management
for Migration
Consider whether you want to replicate your VMware setup in
Nutanix exactly as is or if you're open to improving and streamlining your
processes during migration. A careful review of change management needs will
help avoid disruptions and ensure a smooth transition.
4. Nutanix Ready
Validation
Select HA clustering software that has been Nutanix Ready
Validated. This ensures full compatibility with Nutanix hyper-converged
infrastructure (HCI) and guarantees that support will be available if issues
arise. Having a validated solution can mitigate risk during and after the
migration.
5. Testing Your New
Environment
Testing is essential for a successful migration. Start by
migrating non-critical workloads to Nutanix in a small-scale environment. This
allows your IT team to familiarize themselves with Nutanix's interface and
fine-tune HA settings. Comprehensive testing helps you catch and resolve
potential issues before moving your mission-critical applications.
6. Training and
Documentation
The move to Nutanix will likely introduce new interfaces,
tools, and procedures for managing your HA environment. Invest in thorough
training for your staff and create detailed runbooks documenting the setup and
management of application servers, including network details and disaster
recovery (DR) responsibilities. Well-prepared teams reduce the risk of human
error and enhance operational efficiency.
7. Performance
Requirements
Define the performance demands of your applications. The HA
solution you choose must be able to meet these performance needs consistently.
Regular performance monitoring and adjustments are essential to ensure optimal
application performance, particularly for workloads with high transaction rates
or processing demands.
8. Application
Awareness in Nutanix AHV
Nutanix's hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), when
combined with an application-aware high availability and disaster recovery
software, provides a resilient cluster setup. More advanced HA solutions for
Nutanix AHV environments provide plug-ins customized for specific applications
and databases, such as Oracle, SQL Server, SAP, HANA, and Postges SQL These
plug-ins ensure that the application/DB-specific requirements are adhered to so
that recovery from failures is fast, reliable and in alignment with application
vendor best practices.
9. Failover
Configuration
Consider configuring your clusters for failover at the
application layer. This approach gives you greater flexibility for migration
and disaster recovery. Application-level failover ensures minimal downtime
while giving you more control over how your systems recover and continue to
operate in case of failure.
10. Zero Downtime for
Ongoing Maintenance
Simplified ongoing maintenance is key to long-term
operational success. For example, with some advanced clustered environments,
you can upgrade the passive node while the active node keeps running. Once the
upgrade is complete, failover to the updated node can be done seamlessly,
minimizing disruption and ensuring continuous availability.
By keeping these considerations in mind as you plan your
transition from VMware to Nutanix, you can ensure that your high availability
requirements are met. Each of these steps contributes to a more resilient,
flexible, and efficient IT environment, helping you get the most out of your
investment in Nutanix.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Margaret Hoagland, VP, Global Sales and Marketing, SIOS Technology
Margaret Hoagland, VP of Global Sales and Marketing, is
responsible for leading SIOS Technology Corp.'s sales strategy and manages
the execution of the full range of corporate, product, and marketing
communications programs, that support the adoption and utilization of SIOS
solutions. Margaret brings to her role more than 30 years of marketing
experience including 15 years of experience in the high availability space. She
has a strong track record of partnering with cross-functional teams to build unity
and alignment across the organization. Margaret earned a Master's of Science in
Communications Management from Simmons College and a Bachelor of Arts degree
from Boston College.